EDITORIAL - Losing the message

In a place like Cebu City, where the road network is bursting at the seams from a runaway growth in the number of motor vehicles, there ought to be a better way of celebrating important events like Independence Day than by holding a parade.

The Independence Day parade last June 12 caused such a monstrous traffic jam whatever the parade hoped to inspire in people clearly backfired among the thousands that got caught up in it for hours.

What were the authorities thinking? It is not as if an Independence Day celebration rises or falls on whether a parade is held. Certainly, any Independence Day celebration will not lose its meaning and relevance if done in a more sensible way.

It just does not make any sense anymore to hold an Independence Day parade, or any other parade for that matter, in Cebu City where the slightest interruption of traffic flow causes a major gridlock that spreads throughout most of the city.

Cebu City has very narrow main streets and even narrower secondary roads. The unbridled introduction of more vehicles to a road network that hasn't grown in decades simply makes holding any parade anywhere in the city untenable.

If all that the authorities want to do is showcase, or show off, their patriotic streak, it is pretty certain there isn't any lack of great ideas out there to do so. And there are great available spaces like the SRP to stage anything and everything spectacular, if that's the idea.

But insisting on holding parades under the current traffic circumstances of Cebu City is not unlike allowing a person with arteries so clogged up with bad cholesterol to gorge on lechon every breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

There is no argument parades are a great way of conveying a message. And there is no better way of conveying a people's sense of patriotism than by way of an Independence Day parade. But if the parade only causes anger and inconvenience, then that message is quickly lost forever.